By Peter Brown
If there was ever a moment to remind Australia how unpredictable Donald Trump can be, it came this morning in Washington. During what was meant to be a routine display of alliance diplomacy, President Trump turned a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese into an uncomfortable spectacle – publicly belittling Australia’s ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd.
The meeting, held in the Cabinet Room and briefly opened to the media, was supposed to focus on AUKUS, trade, and critical minerals. Instead, Trump seized on past comments Rudd had made about him before taking up the ambassador’s post.
“I don’t know him,” Trump said at first when asked about Rudd. But moments later, spotting the ambassador across the room, he called out that he had said bad things. (Rudd has called him a “village idiot,” “political liability” and “traitor to the West.”)
Rudd replied calmly that his remarks were made “before I took this position, Mr President.”
Trump then delivered the line that made headlines: “I don’t like you either. And I probably never will.”
The room fell briefly silent before nervous laughter filled the gap. Albanese, sitting beside Trump, managed a polite smile – the sort that world leaders perfect for moments when diplomacy meets farce.
For the Australian delegation, it was an awkward start. The ambassador is meant to represent Australia’s interests in Washington, not become the focus of the U.S. President’s scorn. Trump’s public jab undermined the seriousness of the visit, distracting from discussions on defence cooperation and trade, and casting a shadow over what Canberra hoped would be a reaffirmation of the alliance.
While the White House described the exchange as “light-hearted,” few in the room saw it that way. The optics were unmistakable: an American president publicly dressing down an allied ambassador in front of his own prime minister.
The embarrassment for Albanese is less about the insult itself and more about what it signals. Trump’s thin-skinned, personal style of politics still dominates his diplomacy. Even close partners can be caught off guard when personality overshadows policy.
For Australia, the episode is a reminder that managing the relationship with Washington in the Trump era means managing Trump himself. Albanese will no doubt downplay the moment, emphasising the “strength and longevity” of the alliance. But the footage of Rudd’s tight smile and Trump’s barbed humour tells its own story.
In the end, the visit may still deliver the necessary outcomes on defence and trade – but it will also be remembered for the moment when the Australian ambassador became the punchline in Trump’s Oval Office show.
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The latest in a long list of crap coming from a “world leader”.
Infantile dickhead would be a better description.
The only things his memory really clings to are grudges.
My first thought after watching the video was ‘Why the hell did the Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clenell need to ask the question regarding Kevin Rudd’s comments about Trump during Trumps first term as POTUS. The obvious answer to me was to set up a negative tone for the meeting ahead. Which failed.
Bloody Sky News – a totally captured organisation that is trying to outshine its’ own irrelevance.
We must operate quietly, quickly, to disengage from all things USA now, and be ready to re-negotiate, discuss, sort, from now. One should not argue with a pox, but fight for cures and isolation, well distanced. Kaiser Adolf Trump is such a pox. Skysty and Foxpox are enough newsless nastiness…
Albanese laughed it off, but yes, I agree it would have been awkward for him. Not so much on the incident itself, but on how to manage Trump going forward.
I think Rudd’s view of Trump were both honest and accurate, compared to other comments I’ve seen on Trump, in fact a little soft.
“managing the relationship with Washington in the Trump era means managing Trump himself.” – what a nauseating, demeaning spectacle!
I wonder if Gough would have accepted this apparent necessity to fawn before the creature.
In answer to your question; Andrew Clenell asked the question to draw attention to himself, look at me, I’m Andrew Clenell, Sky’s ace reporter.
Well Andrew, I suppose we all have to start somewhere. don’t we?
We’ve been hammered on Facebook for this article. And each hammering was a case of just reading the title and not the whole piece.
The Orange Defintely Not-a-King Trumpster can’t stand the idea anyone not instantly bowing and scraping and making offerings of stuffed A4 envelopes of cash, er, donations, at the altar of The Donald.
Anyone daring to show signs of intelligence, wit, erudition and not unquestioningly taking everything he spews as the truth and gospel will almost immeditately be targeted as an enemy.
Albo, please keep Kevin as an annoying thorn in Washington.
Michael,
I hope you take being hit by morons on farcebook as a badge of honour. 🙂
I think it’s worth repeating a post I had put up elsewhere on the hypocrisy of views coming from the likes of Liberal leader and seat warmer Susssan Ley, News Corp and SKY over Rudd’s comments on Trump before his re-election and prior to Rudd’s appointment as our US Ambassador.
JD Vance had no time for Trump but changed his tune once selected as a Vice Presidential running mate for the Trumper. Do you actually believe that Vance changed his opinions or is he just another fickle politician?
‘Vice President Vance said many more offensive things about his boss in the days before Trump was elected – here’s a selection:
Vance was a strong opponent to Trump’s policies, even referring to him as, potentially, “America’s Hitler.”
“I’m a Never Trump guy,” Vance said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2016, according to Politico. “I never liked him.”
As Trump continued to campaign, Vance amped up the messaging, warning on NPR that Trump was “leading the white working class to a very dark place,” with campaign promises that ranged from “immoral to absurd” (as he wrote in USA Today).
In April of 2016, he wrote in the New York Times that Trump was “unfit for our nation’s highest office.”
He went even further in a July 2016 opinion piece for The Atlantic, titled “An Opioid for the Masses,” Vance wrote of Trump’s big campaign promises, “He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein … Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”
He wrote on Twitter (and has since deleted) posts that called Trump “reprehensible” and condemned him for fomenting fear and division. In another since-deleted Twitter post used against him by his senate race opponents, he wrote of Trump, “My god what an idiot.”
He sent his former law school roommate a private message on Facebook, which was shared at the time of the 2022 midterms, saying, in part (per the Ohio Capital Journal), “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
Like Rudd, JD Vance has since withdrawn these observations or apologised so is his position as Vice President untenable? Pull your head in Susssan Ley and as for Andrew Clennell at SKY who tried to derail the Albanese/Trump meeting you need to consider your claim to be a journalist. To ask the Rudd question of Trump in that forum was just being mischievous and bringing Australian journalism into disrepute.
Yet somehow, Terry, Trump has managed to get a pledge of loyalty from him. Something is amiss.
TRUMP SET UP – AUSTRALIA NOW IN A MOST PRECARIOUS POSITION
Disgusting behaviour and deals once again by Trump who is playing like an 8 year old bully in the school playground on the world stage and Albanese has walked right into the lion’s den – and it is not what it seems. And in the process Trump and his administration have set Australia up for another confrontation with China – the transaction. Australia once again America’s vassal State to take the heat. US will ditch us long before the AUKUS agreement will ever see the light of the day and the cowardly Albanese Labor Government and kamikaze LNP Opposition have walked right into the trap.
We have no argument with China, we have every right to feel bullied, set up and mockingly deceived and disavowed by Trump and the US. This rare Earth’s metal signing was a set up and masquerade, how our ambassador was treated the true intent of Trump’s administration to put us in the firing line – yet another proxy for America’s wars against the world and anyone who Trump perceives to be his meal ticket.
Listen to how the ABC (Australia) the morning after, who have portrayed this meeting almost the opposite in both respects, and deeply misinformed and disturbing – how blind can our Public Broadcaster be! News Corp’s gutless press all over it as we would expect it to be.
IT WAS A DIPLOMATIC INCIDENT AND A VERY GRIEVOUS ONE WITH SEVERE UNDERTONES!
There is some hope with sensible critique coming out of America but not from the Trump administration, Republican or Democrats parties and usual media culprits. Check out this YouTube clip – Trump ERUPTS on LIVE TV in NIGHTMARE PRESSER – Pondering Politics, 21 October 2025 https://youtu.be/7x_qY_EkDac?si=9VdiNO97umc16Fzw
…and who was the journalist (in this YouTube clip) and media group he represents, prompting this whole of administration and press conference response and public mockery? Absolute arse hole just like the monster he deliberately triggered – So now you have it – Trump’s agenda is a set up and Australia has just been screwed, mocked and abused.
KEATING THE STATESMAN UNPLUGGED – Interview with Laura Tingle https://www.facebook.com/reel/2021490448639686
Top response from Paul Keating, the only ex-Prime Minister or Statesman in Australia who is talking any sense, with the exception of the Greens and Independents, and of course they have been neither despite the policy sense and critique they make.
Labor appears to have lost the plot on foreign policy period, LNP never had it, the Australian MSM are toxic undermining our sovereignty asking the wrong questions including our key Public Broadcaster.
Everyone should be listening to Paul Keating, the only one talking sense, sees the writing on the wall and the courage to tell it.
China is and never has been our enemy, but America is sucking us dry economically, politically and militarily, mocking us under Trump, setting us up as a proxy battler for its paranoia and abuse of China. There will be no AUKUS subs, they will be useless in defence of Australia, they will put us deeply in debt, they are America’s attack dogs making us a target, compromising our sovereignty, and USA under Trump or not will dump and disavow us when their dirty deed has been completed. Why is Australia so blind to the hegemony and abuse meted out by the USA on us, on China, indeed the whole world over.
That snark from SkyNews trying, as usual from Sky, to turn all/any situation into a shit sandwich for his own aggrandizement amongst their audience of ignorant bogans.
T-Rump knows, as do all his flunkies and their bureaucracies that the deal was a year or more in the making, along with Oz and US interactions with China. It makes sense for the burgeoning techno supply-chains across the globe. And in that knowledge would be the pivotal role that Rudd played in stitching it all together to suit Oz and USA (and China).
As usual, SkyNews tried to create what was essentially a ‘storm in a teacup’. It’s all they’re good for.
Trump has the hide of a rhino, and to keep to his performative form, just had to titilate the pathetic droog msm. No skin off Rudd’s nose, he’s had far worse from the old Labor camp.
As for the comments/demands by Ley – being a twat – a SOP requirement for all in that shambolic mob, most of whose erstwhile flunkies are working for the American imperium as perennial toadies for their personal gain.
Mr Brown you are making a mountain out of a mole hill. Just like the murdochracy
@Cath:
Maybe it depends on the molehill, what mountain is being made of it, and what it actually is.
One might wonder many Brits viewed the rise of Hitler and Nazism in the 30s as a ‘molehill’ in the traumatic wake of a devastating war touted as the ‘war to end all wars’. A nation militarily incapable of defending itself (ring any bells?) and terrified by the prospect of another war resorted to toadying, accommodating Fascism (e.g., Moseley’s BUF), befriending, denial, and ultimately appeasement. And that sure ended well.
The ‘murdocracy'(sic) has been indispensable to Trump’s rise, and Albanese – a leader who performs well in the boxing ring of Fed Parliament but who strikes as a man as out of his depth on the international stage – got ‘played’ good here.
Jon Chesterton has nailed it IMO.
‘For the Australian delegation, it was an awkward start.’
It should be noted that this awkward start was devised and implemented by SKY News journalist Andrew Clennell – the question we need to ask is why does SKY News find it to be in their commercial interest to attempt to embarrass Australia and its leaders in an international forum. Was there no other more pertinent or penetrating question Clennell could have asked?
For their readers, Terry.
Over the years I’ve found that people are more tempted to read an article if it’s about someone they dislike.
I imagine it’s the same with Sky News. The majority of their stories are about an evil lefty.
Michael
I’m sure you’re right but it surprises me that they can build a commercial empire on this rubbish.
SKY contributor (i.e. he’s not a journalist) Paul Murray had to revert to Airbus Albo when noting that, as of October 2025, Albanese has made sixteen international trips to twenty-five sovereign countries since assuming office on 23 May 2022.
I have no doubt that the haters will be up in arms about Albo daring to attend international conferences and the like just as they criticised him for not joining the scrum to kiss Trump’s ‘ass’ when he first resumed office.